British Airways Trade Extranet for Europe, Latin America and Caribbean Region, www.speedbirdclub.com.
March 2003.
Runs: SiteSupra VCS 2.0 Pro visual CMS on Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP platform.
Geographical reach: 64 countries.
Development timeframe: three months.
Total administrators: 70
Total registered users: over 30 000
British Airways pays great attention to effectiveness of co-operation with its channel partners, travel agencies, across the world. With the advent of the Internet the global air-transportation leader has started transferring much of its channel partner communications tools and methods to the Web, thus greatly enhancing the workflow with the agencies by means of the new interactive features. To date, the Trade Extranet project has helped BA to significantly optimize costs and streamline the business process, and is one of the high-priority, business-critical tools that the company maintains and develops.
Vide Infra team was given a task to enhance already existing Trade Extranet system with the advanced content management capabilities of SiteSupra Visual Content Server 2.0 Pro software in order to bring several BA Trade Extranet projects under a single efficient CMS platform. Project's scope included transition of all functionality from two websites accommodating 64 countries in total and serving about 40 000 registered users with more than 50 system administrators. The project delivery was to be made strictly according to the agreed time plan and with zero tolerance for random mistakes.
Vide Infra team's implementation experience, second to none commitment to the client and high motivation level and professionalism of the British Airways eCommerce team for Europe, Latin America and Caribbean made the project a complete success. The reinforced system includes all advantages of SiteSupra visual content management technology, as well several tailor-made applications and add-ons to SiteSupra engine: + Advanced Content Sharing engine - possibility to synchronize and
    desynchronize the content in different countries
+ Enhanced User Manager - powerful tool for internal user
    management
+ Mail List Management System - convenient and efficient mailing
    system
+ Enhanced Banner Rotator - everything you need to manage
    internal banners
+ Enhanced Form Generator Module - a breakthrough tool for visual
    form creation and management
+ STARS System Integration - British Airways loyalty program
    integration

Click headers for screenshots
"We are very satisfied with the development of Site Supra for the Speedbird Club Travel Trade Extranet. I would like to mention the professionalism of our Vide Infra contacts who developed a solution in full accordance to the needs of British Airways in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. We are looking forward to enhance Speedbird Club in the future together with Vide Infra Grupa as well." - Dirk Pauli, eCommerce Executive, Europe, Latin America & Caribbean.
Eugene Kharkov - Project Leader and Program Manager
Every project involves a great deal of decision making: small and big, urgent and general. When working on the project of BA Trade Extranet level the decision tree in your head grows exponentially and pushes all the rest out. Now I'm glad I have all the reasons to cut that tree down and happily engage my mind back with my beloved family and my cat.
Anton Sulsky - Account Director and Product Manager
I am glad that BA team was very enthusiastic about our solution, since, naturally, customer motivation plays the prime role in the success of projects of that level. Also, I enjoyed working on this project because the team on our end showed untapped cohesion. Great challenges shape team spirit on its path to better performance.
Astra Meklere, QA and SRS development.
One of the keys to product quality is correct and complete project documentation that helps to determine design and implementation tasks and explain them to our customers. BA project was quite complicated, and I am really glad that understanding of importance of preparing project specifications and plans helped us to finish this project with the high quality and in accordance to customer requirements. Customer satisfaction is the main quality characteristics for us.
Eduard Gailis - System Architect and Chief Programmer
Perhaps we forgot to integrate an air traffic control module. Well, it's out of our focus.
Sergei Nosov - Programming
It was a fourth successful project we have delivered to BA. This one was interesting and challenging, and the timeframe was more than demanding. But I would love to dive into that hustle again in three or four months. Thanks to Eugene for his management muscle and to Eduard for all the advices.
Denis Basta - Programming
It was my pleasure to participate in the development of a project of that scale. To my mind, it won't take long before everything a company needs for the business is hosted at a single machine and is accessible using flexible web interface. Needless to say, SiteSupra is the key.
Yuri Koshkin - Graphic Design
Well, it was lots of meetings, phone calls and discussions during this work. Thanks Dirk (BA team) and everybody on our team for keeping me on the right way. The most interesting part is, the project was so active, so you never can know what next day brings.
Project mantra: "guys, lets kick a brief meeting.."

Project Statistics:
Effective keys pressed during the project: 3376964
Useless keys pressed during the project: 1452094
Effective key/useless key ratio: 0.43
Most popular keys: (tab), e, ', t
Least popular keys: ~ , @, J, ^, Z
Coffee consumed during the project: about 5kg
Sugar consumed: about 2,5kg
Water consumed: about 240l
Average team's meal value in calories: 722
Total calories burned by the team during the project: 615830

Comparative statistics:
The same calories volume and the team of seven could be used to:


 unload three box-wagons full of bricks
dig ditches for 5.7 days in a raw
Walk 1052 kilometers.

Stress test:
On Wednesday, 26th of February 2003 the Vide Infra Team conducted a series of stress tests that were designed to determine the Speedbird.com performance under different stress conditions. For that purpose the website was recorded on the CD and has been put into a number of exercises. Below you will find the results of the tests.
Test Information:
Test Subject: British Airways Speedbirdclub.com Trade Extranet
Control Subject: British Airways Speedbirdclub.com Trade Extranet
Test Location: 3rd floor, 224 Brivibas, Riga, Latvia
Start Time: Wednesday, 26th of February 2003, 13:53 FLE
Stop Time: Wednesday, 26th of February 2003, 15:12 FLE
Test Description:
To test British Airways Speedbirdclub.com Trade Extranet performance under:
+Load
+Simultaneous stressed-out requests
+A fall from the height
Before the test, both the control and the experimental Speedbirdclub.com appeared within the range that would be described as a "normal" Speedbirdclub.com (glittering and ideally smooth).
Load Test:
The test involved loading the server with a lot of heavy information. For that purpose the server was loaded with almost 10 kilos of different information including two Latvia Enterprise Catalogues, about a dozen of dated magazines, and a bulk of used and ready for recycling paper. The server responded to the test without any visible difficulties both during the test and afterwards.
Simultaneous Stressed-Out Requests Test:
The test was performed by two pretty much stressed-out adult males that simultaneously and in a quite nasty manner requested some information from the server on the CD. It was noticed that the server didn't show up any inconsistency in it is performance both during the test and after the test.
A fall from the height:
To run the test the server has been thrown down from the third-floor height (about 17.5 meters). The server has been in the free flying for about 4 seconds and has shown really bad stability in the air, which perhaps was due to bad aerodynamic architecture. After hitting the ground the server remained static and without any visible signs of damage. The server performance after the test was compared to the control server performance and was considered unchanged and stable.
112
After the test both the test and control Speedbirdclub.com performed basically equally. The only difference between two was a scratchy surface and slightly damaged marker sign on the body of the test server. Eventually the team has agreed the server tests were success and the solution is ready for shipping.
www.videinfra.com